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You should read the Project Syndicate column, it is quite interesting
and telling.

It’s Not About Ireland Anymore
Posted: 14 Nov 2010 09:04 PM PST
By Simon Johnson

On the Project Syndicate website, Peter Boone and I argue, with regard
to the European situation in this coming week:

The Germans, responding to the understandable public backlash against
taxpayer-financed bailouts for banks and indebted countries, are
sensibly calling for mechanisms to permit “wider burden sharing”
– meaning losses for creditors. Yet their new proposals, which
bizarrely imply that defaults can happen only after mid-2013, defy the
basic economics of debt defaults.

…

Given the vulnerability of so many eurozone countries, it appears
that Merkel does not understand the immediate implications of her
plan. The Germans and other Europeans insist that they will provide
new official financing to insolvent countries, thus keeping current
bondholders whole, while simultaneously creating a new regime after
2013 under which all this debt could be easily restructured. But, as
European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet likes to point
out, market participants are good at thinking backwards: if they can
see where a Ponzi-type scheme ends, everything unravels.

Like it or not, it’s time for the Europeans to decide: Who gets
unlimited liquidity support because they are essentially solvent, and
who has to restructure their debt – with bridge financing and help
from the outside?

This will be painful and intense. The case for debt restructuring in
Ireland and Greece is clear. What about Portugal and, even more
controversial, Spain – and other eurozone sovereign borrowers?

For our complete assessment, please see the Project Syndicate column.
Here is the full link: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/johnson14/English